Not a bid but a bid writing workshop! I was invited to the Eden Project’s ‘Big Lunch Extra’ Wolverhampton Roadshow to give a talk on bid writing skills and techniques and hold a number of confidential one to one ‘surgeries’ with attendees to discuss in more detail how they could improve their success at gaining funding or service contracts.

Participants attending the roadshow represented a mixture of community groups, social enterprises and community interest companies (CICs). Members of the Eden Project’s pioneering project were eligible to attend a full weekend of events, presentations and workshops designed to help them fulfil the aims of their organisation.

With only 25 minutes to teach people how to make the most of their funding or tender application, I needed to come up with a presentation that would deliver practical guidance, examples and sum up many of the writing techniques I’ve employed over the last 20-odd years – no easy task!

I started by using social media to ask participants what they hope to learn about, two weeks before the event. I then put together a brief presentation covering the five most essential areas they would need to know about and showed them a few quick and easy, tried and tested techniques to help them write clearly and effectively about their projects.

Over the course of the afternoon, I held a number of 20-minute, one to one surgeries, where participants could talk to me in confidence about their projects and discuss ideas and options for revenue and funding.